MENEXENUS: Truly, Socrates, I marvel that Aspasia, who APPENDIX I.
is only a woman, should be able to compose such a speech; she must be a rare one.
It seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genu-SOCRATES: Well, if you are incredulous, you may come ine writings of Plato from the spurious. The only external with me and hear her.
evidence to them which is of much value is that of Aristotle; MENEXENUS: I have often met Aspasia, Socrates, and for the Alexandrian catalogues of a century later include know what she is like.
manifest forgeries. Even the value of the Aristotelian au-SOCRATES: Well, and do you not admire her, and are thority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty concern-you not grateful for her speech?
ing the date and authorship of the writings which are as-MENEXENUS: Yes, Socrates, I am very grateful to her or cribed to him. And several of the citations of Aristotle omit to him who told you, and still more to you who have told the name of Plato, and some of them omit the name of the me.
dialogue from which they are taken. Prior, however, to the SOCRATES: Very good. But you must take care not to enquiry about the writings of a particular author, general tell of me, and then at some future time I will repeat to you considerations which equally affect all evidence to the genu-many other excellent political speeches of hers.
ineness of ancient writings are the following: Shorter works MENEXENUS: Fear not, only let me hear them, and I are more likely to have been forged, or to have received an will keep the secret.
erroneous designation, than longer ones; and some kinds SOCRATES: Then I will keep my promise.
of composition, such as epistles or panegyrical orations, are more liable to suspicion than others; those, again, which have a taste of sophistry in them, or the ring of a later age, or the slighter character of a rhetorical exercise, or in which 21
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a motive or some affinity to spurious writings can be de-authority. A tendency may also be observed to blend the tected, or which seem to have originated in a name or state-works and opinions of the master with those of his schol-ment really occurring in some classical author, are also of ars. To a later Platonist, the difference between Plato and doubtful credit; while there is no instance of any ancient his imitators was not so perceptible as to ourselves. The writing proved to be a forgery, which combines excellence Memorabilia of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Plato are with length. A really great and original writer would have but a part of a considerable Socratic literature which has no object in fathering his works on Plato; and to the forger passed away. And we must consider how we should regard or imitator, the literary hack of Alexandria and Athens, the question of the genuineness of a particular writing, if the Gods did not grant originality or genius. Further, in at-this lost literature had been preserved to us.
tempting to balance the evidence for and against a Platonic These considerations lead us to adopt the following cri-dialogue, we must not forget that the form of the Platonic teria of genuineness: (1) That is most certainly Platos which writing was common to several of his contemporaries.
Aristotle attributes to him by name, which (2) is of consid-Aeschines, Euclid, Phaedo, Antisthenes, and in the next erable length, of (3) great excellence, and also (4) in har-generation Aristotle, are all said to have composed dia-mony with the general spirit of the Platonic writings. But logues; and mistakes of names are very likely to have oc-the testimony of Aristotle cannot always be distinguished curred. Greek literature in the third century before Christ from that of a later age (see above); and has various degrees was almost as voluminous as our own, and without the safe-of importance. Those writings which he cites without men-guards of regular publication, or printing, or binding, or tioning Plato, under their own names, e.g. the Hippias, the even of distinct titles. An unknown writing was naturally Funeral Oration, the Phaedo, etc., have an inferior degree attributed to a known writer whose works bore the same of evidence in their favour. They may have been supposed character; and the name once appended easily obtained by him to be the writings of another, although in the case of 22
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really great works, e.g. the Phaedo, this is not credible; those Proceeding upon these principles we appear to arrive at again which are quoted but not named, are still more defec-the conclusion that nineteen-twentieths of all the writings tive in their external credentials. There may be also a possi-which have ever been ascribed to Plato, are undoubtedly bility that Aristotle was mistaken, or may have confused the genuine. There is another portion of them, including the master and his scholars in the case of a short writing; but this Epistles, the Epinomis, the dialogues rejected by the an-is inconceivable about a more important work, e.g. the Laws, cients themselves, namely, the Axiochus, De justo, De vir-especially when we remember that he was living at Athens, tute, Demodocus, Sisyphus, Eryxias, which on grounds, and a frequenter of the groves of the Academy, during the both of internal and external evidence, we are able with last twenty years of Platos life. Nor must we forget that in all equal certainty to reject. But there still remains a small por-his numerous citations from the Platonic writings he never tion of which we are unable to affirm either that they are attributes any passage found in the extant dialogues to any genuine or spurious. They may have been written in youth, one but Plato. And lastly, we may remark that one or two or possibly like the works of some painters, may be partly great writings, such as the Parmenides and the Politicus, which or wholly the compositions of pupils; or they may have been are wholly devoid of Aristotelian (1) credentials may be fairly the writings of some contemporary transferred by accident attributed to Plato, on the ground of (2) length, (3) excel-to the more celebrated name of Plato, or of some Platonist lence, and (4) accordance with the general spirit of his writin the next generation who aspired to imitate his master.
ings. Indeed the greater part of the evidence for the genuine-Not that on grounds either of language or philosophy we ness of ancient Greek authors may be summed up under should lightly reject them. Some difference of style, or infe-two heads only: (1) excellence; and (2) uniformity of tradi-riority of execution, or inconsistency of thought, can hardly tiona kind of evidence, which though in many cases suffi-be considered decisive of their spurious character. For who cient, is of inferior value.
always does justice to himself, or who writes with equal care 23
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at all times? Certainly not Plato, who exhibits the greatest haps infer that he was unacquainted with a second dialogue differences in dramatic power, in the formation of sentences, bearing the same name. Moreover, the mere existence of a and in the use of words, if his earlier writings are compared Greater and Lesser Hippias, and of a First and Second with his later ones, say the Protagoras or Phaedrus with the Alcibiades, does to a certain extent throw a doubt upon Laws. Or who can be expected to think in the same man-both of them. Though a very clever and ingenious work, ner during a period of authorship extending over above the Lesser Hippias does not appear to contain anything fifty years, in an age of great intellectual activity, as well as of beyond the power of an imitator, who was also a careful political and literary transition? Certainly not Plato, whose student of the earlier Platonic writings, to invent. The mo-earlier writings are separated from his later ones by as wide tive or leading thought of the dialogue may be detected in an interval of philosophical speculation as that which sepa-Xen. Mem., and there is no similar instance of a motive
rates his later writings from Aristotle.
which is taken from Xenophon in an undoubted dialogue The dialogues which have been translated in the first Ap-of Plato. On the other hand, the upholders of the genuine-pendix, and which appear to have the next claim to genu-ness of the dialogue will find in the Hippias a true Socratic ineness among the Platonic writings, are the Lesser Hippias, spirit; they will compare the Ion as being akin both in sub-the Menexenus or Funeral Oration, the First Alcibiades.
ject and treatment; they will urge the authority of Aristotle; Of these, the Lesser Hippias and the Funeral Oration are and they will detect in the treatment of the Sophist, in the cited by Aristotle; the first in the Metaphysics, the latter in satirical reasoning upon Homer, in the reductio ad absur-the Rhetoric. Neither of them are expressly attributed to dum of the doctrine that vice is ignorance, traces of a Pla-Plato, but in his citation of both of them he seems to be tonic authorship. In reference to the last point we are doubt-referring to passages in the extant dialogues. From the men-ful, as in some of the other dialogues, whether the author is tion of Hippias in the singular by Aristotle, we may per-asserting or overthrowing the paradox of Socrates, or merely 24
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following the argument whither the wind blows. That no of Pericles is expressly mentioned in the Phaedrus, and conclusion is arrived at is also in accordance with the char-this may have suggested the subject, in the same manner acter of the earlier dialogues. The resemblances or imita-that the Cleitophon appears to be suggested by the slight tions of the Gorgias, Protagoras, and Euthydemus, which mention of Cleitophon and his attachment to Thrasymachus have been observed in the Hippias, cannot with certainty in the Republic; and the Theages by the mention of Theages be adduced on either side of the argument. On the whole, in the Apology and Republic; or as the Second Alcibiades more may be said in favour of the genuineness of the seems to be founded upon the text of Xenophon, Mem. A Hippias than against it.
similar taste for parody appears not only in the Phaedrus, The Menexenus or Funeral Oration is cited by Aristotle, but in the Protagoras, in the Symposium, and to a certain and is interesting as supplying an example of the manner in extent in the Parmenides.
which the orators praised the Athenians among the Athe-To these two doubtful writings of Plato I have added the nians, falsifying persons and dates, and casting a veil over First Alcibiades, which, of all the disputed dialogues of Plato, the gloomier events of Athenian history. It exhibits an ac-has the greatest merit, and is somewhat longer than any of quaintance with the funeral oration of Thucydides, and was, them, though not verified by the testimony of Aristotle, and perhaps, intended to rival that great work. If genuine, the in many respects at variance with the Symposium in the proper place of the Menexenus would be at the end of the description of the relations of Socrates and Alcibiades. Like Phaedrus. The satirical opening and the concluding words the Lesser Hippias and the Menexenus, it is to be com-bear a great resemblance to the earlier dialogues; the ora-pared to the earlier writings of Plato. The motive of the tion itself is professedly a mimetic work, like the speeches piece may, perhaps, be found in that passage of the Sym-in the Phaedrus, and cannot therefore be tested by a com-posium in which Alcibiades describes himself as self-con-parison of the other writings of Plato. The funeral oration victed by the words of Socrates. For the disparaging man-25
Menexenus
ner in which Schleiermacher has spoken of this dialogue tions of the oral discourses both of Socrates and Plato may there seems to be no sufficient foundation. At the same have formed the basis of semi-Platonic writings; some of them time, the lesson imparted is simple, and the irony more may be of the same mixed character which is apparent in transparent than in the undoubted dialogues of Plato. We Aristotle and Hippocrates, although the form of them is dif-know, too, that Alcibiades was a favourite thesis, and that at ferent. But the writings of Plato, unlike the writings of Aristotle, least five or six dialogues bearing this name passed current seem never to have been confused with the writings of his in antiquity, and are attributed to contemporaries of Socrates disciples: this was probably due to their definite form, and to and Plato. (1) In the entire absence of real external evi-their inimitable excellence. The three dialogues which we dence (for the catalogues of the Alexandrian librarians can-have offered in the Appendix to the criticism of the reader not be regarded as trustworthy); and (2) in the absence of may be partly spurious and partly genuine; they may be alto-the highest marks either of poetical or philosophical excel-gether spurious;that is an alternative which must be frankly lence; and (3) considering that we have express testimony admitted. Nor can we maintain of some other dialogues, such to the existence of contemporary writings bearing the name as the Parmenides, and the Sophist, and Politicus, that no of Alcibiades, we are compelled to suspend our judgment considerable objection can be urged against them, though on the genuineness of the extant dialogue.
greatly overbalanced by the weight (chiefly) of internal evi-Neither at this point, nor at any other, do we propose to dence in their favour. Nor, on the other hand, can we ex-draw an absolute line of demarcation between genuine and clude a bare possibility that some dialogues which are usu-spurious writings of Plato. They fade off imperceptibly from ally rejected, such as the Greater Hippias and the Cleitophon, one class to another. There may have been degrees of genu-may be genuine. The nature and object of these semi-Pla-ineness in the dialogues themselves, as there are certainly tonic writings require more careful study and more compari-degrees of evidence by which they are supported. The tradi-son of them with one another, and with forged writings in 26
Menexenus
general, than they have yet received, before we can finally decide on their character. We do not consider them all as genuine until they can be proved to be spurious, as is often maintained and still more often implied in this and similar If you wish to view more of
discussions; but should say of some of them, that their genu-Plato’s works in PDF, be sure
ineness is neither proven nor disproven until further evi-to return to
dence about them can be adduced. And we are as confi-
dent that the Epistles are spurious, as that the Republic, the
Timaeus, and the Laws are genuine.
On the whole, not a twentieth part of the writings which pass under the name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves and two or three other plausible inventions, can be fairly doubted by those who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth If you wish to view more
may have taken place in his philosophy (see above). That twentieth debatable portion scarcely in any degree affects Electronic Classics Series
our judgment of Plato, either as a thinker or a writer, and PDF files, return to
though suggesting some interesting questions to the scholar
and critic, is of little importance to the general reader.
End